[Sca-cooks] Concerning Ryori Monogatari

[Solveig Throndardottir]

Noble Cooks!

Greetings from Sólveig! 

> The conclusion that H. T. Huang draws in Science and Civilisation in China, volume 6 part V: Fermentations and food science is that, in China, soy sauce was certainly known by the time of Qimin yaoshu (544), but that it was not as popular as it is today, with fermented meat and fish sauces being preferred.  Over time, soy sauce became more popular in the north of China, with the situation today being that fish sauces are an almost exclusively south-China and Vietnam thing.

There were several types of fermented sauces or pastes used in Japan prior to the Azuchi-Momoyama Period. They show up in dictionaries, ledgers, property tags, and written in pictures of specific feasts. Fish and vegetables were used to produce these with different kanji being used depending on whether fish or vegetables were fermented. Actual shōyu in Japan is believed to have originally been a byproduct of miso production. Shōyu was sufficiently novel in the early 17th century that the author of Ryōri Monogatari included two recipies for shōyu (soy sauce) while completely omitting recipes for flavored vinegar and flavored miso which appear as ingredients in various recorded recipes.

> A copy is available online at https://monoskop.org/images/f/f1/Needham_Joseph_Science_and_Civilisation_in_China_Vol_6-5_Biology_and_Biological_Technology_Fermentations_and_Food_Science.pdf if anyone is interested.  It's a wonderful book.
> 
> Page 374 discusses soy sauce in Japan and China [I've updated the Chinese romanizations to pinyin, since the author uses the dated Wade-Giles system]:

Yes it is. It is recommended by Eugene N. Anderson. I generally speaking prefer to have paper copies especially if the text is particularly useful. I have enough trouble wrangling journal articles on my computer.

> During the Kamakura Period (+1184 to +1333) miso became a staple in the Japanese diet.

During the earlier Nara and Heian Periods, the imperial court went hog wild over milk products. These include a form of butter and a cultured milk product which some argue resembled Parmesan cheese. The latter product, called 蘇 “so”, appears to have been used as a condiment. 

> The earliest reference to shoyu [the typical soy sauce of Japan] occurs in the Ekirinhon Setsuyoshu a Japanese dictionary of +1597.  The procedure for making shoyu may have been transmitted from China in the preceding century.  As a result, the Japanese process for making shoyu is practically the same as the Chinese process for making the jiang type of jiangyou.”

And, of course, Kikoman claims to have been founded in the sixteenth century.

Your Humble Servant
Sólveig Þróndardóttir
Amateur Scholar